


Is and Isn't

by biggestbaddestwolf



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Destroy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggestbaddestwolf/pseuds/biggestbaddestwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan and the Normandy arrive back on Earth to look for Shepard. This is Kaidan's thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is and Isn't

There’s no Shepard anymore.

There’s no apartment on the Citadel.

There’s no Citadel.

There’s no London, either, not really, not under the hulls of dead reapers, the dead gods of the Geth heretic. Like much of Earth, it’s an elephant graveyard that rusts instead of turning into ivory and dust. Repairs haven’t started yet, not here. Here it’s recovery. Here it’s an attempt, a slow and arduous attempt, into clearing the fields.

Here there is the dead of over a dozen sentient species. Asari limbs lay collapsed underneath the weight of Krogan allies. Barely identifiable human faces in the wreckage of turian ships.

Stepping off of a transport in London forces Kaidan into a moment of silence. The air demands it from him, takes words from his throat in and forces him into a fresh mourning. He knows to look at the sky- the thick rolling clouds of bombings and debris that the scientists say may never clear- that London will always do this to him now, will always have that painful slice of tragic awe.

The gravel that was once rubbled and paved road is nearly a fine dust under his boots. He stares across the field that was once a city.

For an instant when he can think again, his hope fails him, trips and falters with the red-gray of the sky. There is no way that one man, even a hero, could have laid here, could have stood up, could have walked away.

But Shepard is different. He isn’t just humanity’s hero, or the galaxy’s or the universe. He isn’t the slayer of the reapers, or the hero who stood against the gods of the heretics.

He is Kaidan’s hero. Garrus’. Jack’s and EDI’s and Joker’s. Tali’s and Miranda’s. Wrex and Grunt’s, even if they would deny it on some days. He was their hero, out there in the graveyard of Reapers and humans and asari and salarians and volus and krogan and all the rest.

That made the difference, Kaidan told himself. He looked behind him a the other crew members leaving the Normandy, saw the same jolt of grief and sobriety and doubt and resolve in their eyes, in their faces, in their bodies.

He was theirs.

There was still a Shepard out there, somewhere. And they would find him.


End file.
